"You only say that because you think you have a reputation to keep up," he said wearily. "Why on earth shouldn't you be in love with Iris if you want to be? I am."
Verily, Red Antony had changed in two years! It was never his way before to tell the truth about himself. And now ... or was it, my confusion asked, just a fancy on his part, born that moment of a desire to disturb me. His vanity had always inclined him to disturb and startle, whether by a lie or by a truth. And one is always confounded by the sudden froth of a fool's mind.
"Anyway, it's the sort of thing one keeps to oneself," I said,—lamely, I suppose. He had so much of an advantage over one in any unseemly discussion.
"Remarkable amount of good that seems to have done you," he quizzed me, mildly. But he seemed to be taking as little heed of me as what he said to me, his attention was all for the windows of the ballroom. There was something pitiable about the way his eyes followed the scene from our vantage, as any poor alien might bitterly watch the revelries of a strange country.
"I heard this afternoon," he said, "that there was a party here to-night—and when I saw you on Piccadilly I knew where you must be going, so I suddenly thought I'd come too. Just to have a look at my betters enjoying themselves, you know.
"If you were a human being instead of a gentleman," he said steadily, "you'd be telling a man something. You'd tell him, for instance, if the marriage is a success, and if Iris is happy, and what her recreations are, and so on. Wouldn't you now?"
"Oh, Antony, what a dolt you are!" I told him. "If you'd only approach a man properly, without any of that bluff and bluster that so gets on one's nerves, one might tell you quite a lot."
In spite of that, however—"that candour peculiar to habitual liars who read novels"—I was thinking very hard about what exactly I would tell him about Iris, for Antony evoked the truth as little as he indulged in it.
"Of course the marriage is a success," I said. "And as to Iris being happy I've never seen any reason to doubt it."
"So long as she's got health, beauty, riches, sort of thing, eh!" he added with a laugh. "I just wondered, that's all. Mexico is the devil of a country for wondering in...."